reading the hobbit the other day it mentions the arkenstone is a sphere/globe cant remember which!

so the film got it wrong? have i missed some further explanation...would it look to much like a palantir, could the arkenstone have been one of the lost palantirs? would reason why all the dwarf kings get corrupted! "You Tolkien to me?!" - Hobbit de Niro

No, it can't be anything already made, because it's mentioned that the dwarves fashioned it themselves. Honestly, if it weren't for that one description, I'd be convinced that it was a silmaril. As it is, though, it can't be. And I don't think anyone would find a palantir and reshape it either. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

But ultimately, no, it wasn't a silmaril. It's too bad though, because I think it would have been a great way to tie the two stories together. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

John Rateliff goes into lengthy detail answering this very question in The History of The Hobbit
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And he conclues that it could very well be a silmaril-in the books original context-The Elvenking (i.e Thingol) The Necromancer, the lands of Faere to the east are were all supposedly lifted from the book of lost tales/'26 Quenta Silmaril, and if you accept his theories there is nothing to say Tolkien didn't intend the Arkenstone to be a renamned Silmaril in the hobbit.

I like to view it as a possibilty, since one of the Silmail's was thrown into a dark cavern in the earth, you never know (Though I am completely opposed to PJ 'adapting' The Silmarillion)... ‘As they came to the gates Cirdan the Shipwright came forth to greet them. Very tall he was, and his beard was long, and we was grey and old, save that his eyes were keen as stars; and he looked at them and bowed, and said ‘All is now ready.’

Tolkien's description of the Arkenstone makes it seem very much like a Silmaril:

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"The Arkenstone! The Arkenstone!" murmured Thorin in the dark, half dreaming with his chin upon his knees. "It was like a globe with a thousand facets; it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the Moon!"

And, when Bilbo finds the gem:

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The great jewel shone before his feet of its own inner light, and yet, cut and fashioned by the dwarves, who had dug it from the heart of the mountain long ago, it took all light that fell upon it and changed it into ten thousand sparks of white radiance shot with glints of the rainbow.

No wonder that there has been so much speculation on this topic.

Btw, Globe, sphere, orb are all pretty much interchangeable. 'There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' - Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring

How the hell did it end up in the far east where erebor is? I always supposed that maedhros threw it in a chasm all the way in beleriand that was hence formed by the war of wrath. When beleriand fell it too was lost underground, under the ocean. There is no evidence of volcanic movement under erebor so I can't see how it could have travelled that far. Besides, I don't like the concept of dwarves having a silmaril, it is far too important and powerful for dwarves to have a hold of. It belongs in the first age and no where else! "fingolfin looked up in grief to see what evil morgoth had done to maedhros"

Well sure, the movies can do whatever the heck they want (i.e. - Azog, Nazgul tombs). But that doesn't make it canonical. The fact of the matter is that the Arkenstone is not a Silmaril. Here are the particular quotes:

First regarding the Silmarils...

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...not until the Sun passes and the Moon falls, shall it be known of what substance they were made. Like the crystal of diamonds it appeared, and yet was more strong than adamant, so that no violence could mar it or break it within the Kingdom of Arda.

Then about the Arkenstone (as Otaku quoted earlier)...

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The great jewel shone before his feet of its own inner light, and yet, cut and fashioned by the dwarves, who had dug it from the heart of the mountain long ago, it took all light that fell upon it and changed it into ten thousand sparks of white radiance shot with glints of the rainbow.

As malickfan says above, the idea was basically lifted from Tolkien's version of The Silmarillion at the time. But as it is now, the Arkenstone cannot be a Silmaril.

And please, no Silmarillion movies by Jackson. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

I never stated that the Arkenstone was a Silmaril! I only noted a strong (possibliy intentional) resemblance. Tolkien might have considered making the Arkenstone a Silmaril, just as he might have once considered making the Elvenking be Thingol Greycloak rather than a later cousin. 'There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' - Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring

this detail could be a small "mistake" by Tolkien? Even Tolkien wasn't perfect (even though he was closer to perfection than anyone before or after), and some small details may have slipped from his mind Vocalist in the progressive metal band Renamed.

Would agree with the other quotes used from Ch 13, but would also add that as it sits alone it is seen by Bilbo as a "little globe of pallid light". Nothing pallid about a Silmaril! Manwe, when asked a simple "Yes" or "No" question, contemplated, and responded "the middle one."

But I find that to be a huge stretch. It's much easier to just take the text as what it says rather than flippantly disregarding one or the other as a mistake. You could then do that with anything you felt like. Besides that, there are other reasons it's probably not a silmaril. For instance, why would everyone be willing to bury it with Thorin. There were wars and kin-slayings over the silmarils in the First Age. I can't imagine everyone in the Third Age just deciding to leave it lie buried in Erebor.

No, it's much easier to just take the texts as face value. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

The Silmarils were made from the light of the Two Trees. The sun and moon are just lesser lights, so if the Arkenstone is even less, it can't be a Silmaril. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

Is that if they make the Silmarilion movies show the silmarils alike to the arkenstone so is the audience who decides. They woulnt need to explain or state nothing and perhaps the silmaril loses power with time(ages) The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true!

We don't know what have happened to it! And I don't think it is a stretch to think that detail was a slip, because he wrote The Hobbit first and after that he wrote about the silmarils and put in similarities to the arkenstone and "forgot" about the cutting and shaping

Or, if we consider the possibility about diminishing power then it may have been possible to shape it

One other possible explanation is that the equipment have become much better, and that they could not shape the silmarils in The First Age due to bad equipment, but during the late Second Age the equipment had become much better and made it possible to shape them? The comment about "yet was more strong than adamant, so that no violence could mar it or break it within the Kingdom of Arda." could be more symbolic as a reference to the equipment rather than the silmaril itself Vocalist in the progressive metal band Renamed.

so all of this is really just idle chit-chat. Personally, I wouldn't want any insinuation that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril simply because it isn't. If someone wants to go against the text and believe that it is, that's their prerogative. But really, it shouldn't be up to the audience to decide when the author has already determined that it isn't. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

Tolkien actually started working on what became The Silmarillion somewhere around 1916 - over 20 years before The Hobbit was ever published. So no, I don't think it was a slip.

Honestly, I like the idea of a Silmaril turning up again after about 6000 years, but I have to go with what Tolkien actually wrote here, and the fact remains that the two texts are contradictory. Also, thinking about it, I kind of like it that the dwarves try to recreate their own version of the Silmarils. It's just that it ended up as a lesser work. I think it's poetic and symbolic of a deeper sense of the diminishing of the ancient world by the time of the end of the Third Age. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

I sincerely hope a Silmarillion film never sees the light of day
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I'd much rather see Roverrandom or Farmer Giles of Ham adapated as TV Films ‘As they came to the gates Cirdan the Shipwright came forth to greet them. Very tall he was, and his beard was long, and we was grey and old, save that his eyes were keen as stars; and he looked at them and bowed, and said ‘All is now ready.’

I would love to see that! I've only read it once a very long time ago, but I remember loving it. I think i'll have to give it another quick read sometime this summer. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel

For me the Arkenstone was one of the biggest let-downs in terms of design in the films, along with Radagast's bird-crap and Azog's general look. It just didn't convince me that it was worthy of being treasured to that degree by the Dwarves: I would have preferred a more globe-like look. I initially disliked the version created by Badali Jewellery but I've grown to like that interpretation more and more since its release. "A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities."-J.R.R.Tolkien

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."-Gandalf

On balance, I don't think the Arkenstone is one of the Silmarils (or a Palantir), but it has a kinship with the Silmarils in the way people react to it. One of the threads running through Tolkien's work seems to be a tension or danger surrounding craftsmanship - the skill to transform parts of the physical world into something else. It's an essential part of life for people who are inclined that way (the Noldorin Elves like Feanor; the Dwarves) yet carries with it the peril of getting too attached to what you've made - and if what you make is beautiful and splendid, other people want it too. Feanor won't break his Silmarils to restore the light of the two Trees after the Trees are destroyed, and wages terrible war on anyone who tries to take them; Thorin goes off the rails because he wants the heirloom of his people too much. Saruman is, I think, part of this complex too - he is the "crafty" wizard who goes a stage further again - instead of working with the grain of the world to create beauty, he is lured by the power that such practical craft-skills give and no longer cares what he destroys in the process; he has "a mind of metal and wheels". (Apparently the "Saru-" element of his name is an Old English word relating to cunning in making.) Perhaps also this tension around creativity relates somewhat to Tolkien's own tensions about the place of his "sub-creation" Middle-earth in the life of a devout Catholic.

Do you think that Aule is an alternative to this time of sub-creation story? When confronted by Eru, he is willing to destroy the dwarves. I think it shows his ability to let go which is absent from the others that you mention. "...not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." -Arwen Undómiel